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A cool thing happened on the weekend. I’ve been thinking about trying to teach B about meditation – partly in the hope that it will help his concentration. I raised the subject on saturday and he liked the idea – he knew what it was from seeing me do it in the past.

So Saturday evening before bed time we sat cross-legged facing each other, both on cushions to help our posture. I showed him how to sit and how to place his hands the way the guy at work has taught me, and then we did a little guided meditation.

I hadn’t originally known what to do with it – I was thinking of just practising sitting still and quietly etc, but a friend suggested guided meditations and it seemed to be the right thing. Just before we started I came up with the concept and we went through it really well. I had B imagine a door, and describe it to me in detail. I then had him open the door and step through into a garden. We went into detail about the garden and I had him flesh it out a bit, telling me about the flowers etc inside it. It actually went really really well – he described things brilliantly and I had no doubt he was genuinely seeing them in his head. When he first opened the door he told me there was something scary through there, so I simply told him that was from another dream and that it was gone now – replaced by the garden. When he sat down on the grass he told me he got a wet bottom

B really enjoyed the process – we only went for about 5 minutes I think but he did well and he loved it. Sunday he actually asked “Can we do meditation tonight please?” which thrilled me. So we did it again – the door and the garden, and just went into more detail. R tells me that as I got him to sit down in his mind under the biggest tree in the garden, he actually scooted back a little with his eyes still shut, so he was obviously sitting himself down He comes up with all sorts of things – magic birds with special powers and lots of animals like tigers and giraffes etc that come when he calls. We’re undecided yet as to whether this is something we should just let him go with as part of the general imagination or if I should get him to concentrate more on detail than dreaming things up. R suggests (and I think she’s right) that sometimes he might be trying to impress me with the things he “sees”, so we’ll just see how we go.

It’s very cool doing this with him, and it makes me feel good because I know how useful a tool meditation can be, and I feel that if I aid him in holding onto his powers of imagination and visualization, plus give him early practise in concentration then he will grow up without some of the blocks I have that currently make some of the same things difficult for me. Improved concentration can’t hurt at any rate

Then we read Harry Potter afterward – which he loves, and he works hard to try and get more out of me when I tell him it’s time for bed! Makes for a fun evening though, and I’m looking forward to going through the rest of the books.

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